St. Ann School students and their parents watch as St. Ann student Joey Hopkins, 12 of Bridgeport, is interviewed on the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School Principal, Teresa Tillinger, in Bridgeport on Sunday, November 25, 2012. Hopkins and his fellow students appeared on the show because of their work with the charity Free the Children during a recent trip to Kenya.

St. Ann School students and their parents watch as St. Ann student Joey Hopkins, 12 of Bridgeport, is interviewed on the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School Principal, Teresa

From left; St. Ann School students Gabby Torres, 15, Cynthia Rivera, 13, and Magdalena Dutkowska, 12, all of Bridgeport, watch themselves on the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School Principal, Teresa Tillinger, in Bridgeport on Sunday, November 25, 2012. The children appeared on the show because of their work with the charity Free the Children during a recent trip to Kenya.

From left; St. Ann School students Gabby Torres, 15, Cynthia Rivera, 13, and Magdalena Dutkowska, 12, all of Bridgeport, watch themselves on the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School

St. Ann School students Gabby Torres, 15, is hugged by Jonell Hopkins, mother of St. Ann student Joey Hopkins, after watching the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School Principal, Teresa Tillinger, in Bridgeport on Sunday, November 25, 2012. Torres, Hopkins, and their fellow students appeared on the show because of their work with the charity Free the Children during a recent trip to Kenya.

St. Ann School students Gabby Torres, 15, is hugged by Jonell Hopkins, mother of St. Ann student Joey Hopkins, after watching the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School Principal,

St. Ann School student Joey Hopkins, 12, of Bridgeport, smiles after watching himself and his schoolmates on the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School Principal, Teresa Tillinger, in Bridgeport on Sunday, November 25, 2012. The children appeared on the show because of their work with the charity Free the Children during a recent trip to Kenya.

St. Ann School student Joey Hopkins, 12, of Bridgeport, smiles after watching himself and his schoolmates on the television news program 60 Minutes at the home of St. Ann School Principal, Teresa Tillinger, in

BRIDGEPORT -- They talked of toiling in the dirt and heat to build classrooms in Kenya and of helping impoverished children in countries thousands of miles away.

But these kids from Bridgeport giggled like the schoolchildren they are as they gathered around a TV Sunday night to see their charitable endeavors during the summer profiled on a national news program.

"There we are, there we are!" shouted 15-year-old Gabby Torres as she and her pals from Black Rock's St. Ann School appeared on screen, stacking concrete blocks under the glare of the African sun and building what would become a dormitory for young girls.

Cheers went up from the more than 70 kids, parents and supporters gathered in St. Ann Principal Theresa Tillinger's family room as an episode of CBS' "60 Minutes" showed Joey Hopkins and Magdalena Dutkowska each being given a goat from members of the Maasai tribe for their help in building a new school.

Then there were the inevitable questions from classmates: What happened to the goat?

"I left him in Kenya," Hopkins said. "My mom said I could have a dog, but I think I would rather have kept the goat."

But these were some serious Bridgeport kids when it came to the problems facing children in underdeveloped countries.

"These children are a representative of a majority of children at St. Ann who have come to realize they are empowered to change the world," Tillinger said. "This has become a movement where children have become empowered, and I'm proud to have become a part of it."

Watson grew up in poverty in Jamaica and first met her father when she moved here to live with him at age 12.

As a student at St. Ann, she organized Oprah's Club and O Ambassadors, the worldwide anti-poverty program started by Oprah Winfrey to help children who were growing up as she had.

Watson's efforts to raise money for children living in poverty around the globe inspired Torres, Hopkins, Dutkowska and later, 13-year-old Cynthia Rivera, to carry on her efforts at the school.

Together, the four started a local chapter of Free the Children after their hero, Craig Kielburger, who as a 12-year-old Canadian boy, had started the international charity program.

They began making small beaded bracelets and soon had the whole school producing them for sale for the charity.

But Kenya still seemed far away.

"When the others began talking about going to Kenya, I wasn't sure I wanted to go," Hopkins said. "Then adults told me that it was a bad idea, that it wasn't for me, and that's when I knew I had to go."

So they raised the money and ventured to the East African nation, where their eyes were opened to a kind of poverty they said they had never seen before.

But that wasn't the end of it.

"We then grabbed bricks, mixed the cement and began building walls," said Torres, now a student at Lauralton Hall in Milford.

"Every day we would get up, have breakfast and then go out and grab shovels, grab bricks and get started," Hopkins said.

"We worked even when we would become dizzy from all the heat," Torres said.

When the locals residents saw the students were serious about chipping in, they sang them encouragement.

The four shouted "yes" in unison when asked if they would go back tomorrow.

But Sunday night, as they were congratulated and clapped on the back by their classmates and parents, the four were television stars.